This was Television on March 10

1997: The Hellmouth opens

An early success for the fledgling WB network, Buffy the Vampire Slayer began a seven-season run with a two-hour pilot on this date. Joss Whedon’s supernatural teen drama starred Sarah Michelle Gellar as the titular Slayer, a “chosen one” imbued with superpowers that allow her to fight the vampires, demons, and other assorted evildoers concentrated around a dimensional portal in Sunnydale, CA. Despite the biases against its genre trappings (and its origins as a campy, poorly received 1992 film) the series gained a sizable fan base and generated significant critical acclaim. -A.D.